


Tempo

by Fyre



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Trauma, Wherein Aziraphale has escaped an oppressive regime and it's not as simple as it sounds, emotional scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24647548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: You don’t live that way, not for that long, without scars. Maybe not scars you can see, but they’re there if you watch for them. Crowley understood all along. The veiled questions. The fear of asking for anything aloud. The genuine pleased disbelief when he gets what he wants.He might not look it, but Crowley’s patient. Lie on a rock in the sun and wait kind of thing. Well, now he has the sun all to himself, and he can wait a little bit longer. It takes time. Change does, but especially when youhaven’tdone it before.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 87
Kudos: 327





	Tempo

Crowley understands.

He really does.

He’s known Aziraphale long enough and he _gets_ it.

You don’t live that way, not for that long, without scars. Maybe not scars you can see, but they’re there if you watch for them. He’s understood all along. The veiled questions. The fear of asking for anything aloud. The genuine pleased disbelief when he gets what he wants.

He might not look it, but Crowley’s patient. Lie on a rock in the sun and wait kind of thing. Well, now he has the sun all to himself, and he can wait a little bit longer. It takes time. Change does, but especially when you _haven’t_ done it before.

What hurts, though, is watching Aziraphale muddle through it.

Once, Crowley took his hand in public and he flinched as if burned, recoiling and darting looks around as if expecting eyes on him, watching. Side by side, fine, but touching? Oh, no, that wouldn’t be allowed.

And as soon as he did it, the angel’s face tensed up in distress and he stared at his hand as if it had betrayed him. “Oh!”

So Crowley gently nudged their arms against each other. Not as obvious, but the intent still there.

For a moment, Aziraphale looked as if he might burst into tears, but he dragged on a watery smile, nodded, and ever so cautiously nudged his arm back against Crowley’s.

It’s little things. Things he wished he’d thought of, but never noticed. He’s always poked fun at the angel, ribbed him mercilessly about his clothes, his foods, his… well… everything. Only turns out that when dealing with the aftershocks of breaking free, you don’t know where the blade will come from now. Or who will hold it.

“Stop it!” Aziraphale bursts out. “Stop! You’re– _why_ would you say that?”

Crowley backs up a step, recalibrating. Teasing him about Marlowe had been a running joke every time they ventured into a pub. A sly dig, maybe they should leave some other poor muppet with the bill. Someone who had it coming to take the fall for them.

People are staring and Aziraphale’s face drains of colour as he realises. “Oh.” He laughs weakly. “Ha. Yes. We could do that.”

“Angel,” Crowley says, not ungently. “It’s all right.”

Aziraphale nods again, taut and tense, but his eyes are too shiny. He smooths and re-smooths his napkin on the table. “I just– I was–” He smiles as brittle as spun glass. “Excuse me.”

And like that, he’s gone.

Crowley settles up with cash and takes the receipt. Doesn’t take a genius to work out where the angel is, so he drives around to the bookshop, taps once and slips in the moment the door is unlocked. Aziraphale is sitting at his desk, shoulders hunched, back to the door and the world.

Silently, Crowley places the receipt on the desk, then sits down on the couch.

Aziraphale doesn’t look at him at once, but he does touch the receipt.

“I’m sorry,” he finally says in a painfully small voice. “I don’t– you were _teasing_. I know that.”

“I know,” Crowley says quietly. He considers his options, then leans forward, propping his arms on his knees. “Listen, angel.” He keeps his voice gentle and even, because he knows that’s what Aziraphale needs, but he can’t not be honest with him. “I’m still going to be a bastard. I’m going to laugh at your clothes and your froo-froo drinks and those… squishy pudding things that go floppy if you cook them wrong. I can guarantee you, one hundred percent, that I will never not do that. Just so you know it’s not personal when I tell you Shakespeare was a plagiarising hack who nicked my words.”

Aziraphale gives a small, damp laugh. “I don’t know why I put up with you.”

“Charm,” Crowley replies, forcing himself to drape back nonchalantly on the couch. Always looked good, a bit of nonchalant draping. “Suaveness. Force of personality.”

This time the laugh is stronger.

“You–” He sniffs hard. “You have such delusions of grandeur.”

“Well-earned delusions of grandeur,” Crowley retorts, swaying gently from side to side. “I’m pretty bloody grand, me.”

Bloodshot eyes that are still too wet and shiny for Crowley’s liking flick his way. “I don’t know why you put up with _me_.”

“Ah!” Crowley jabs a finger at him. “No! No, you don’t get to play that! I can tell when you’re fishing for compliments, angel!” He recognises the small twitch of Aziraphale’s lips, the precursor to a hidden smile. “Can’t go around expecting me to be saying _nice_ things to you now, can you? Means everything’s gone horribly wrong somewhere along the line.”

“Of course.”

Still, Crowley unfolds from the couch and refolds to bend and bring his mouth down to Aziraphale’s ear.

“You complete bastard,” he murmurs and – at last – Aziraphale smiles.

And so they pick their way through the mine-field of Aziraphale’s newly-claimed independence. Some days, everything is fine. Other days… other days are less good.

Days of shouting and recriminations. Days when Crowley wanders into the shop to find Aziraphale sitting in a tight knot, unmoving, a torn page in his hand, an old letter, some old papers from his former superiors.

Ha. Superiors.

They made a mockery of the term.

They burn the letters. Not right away. There are reams of them. Some flat and to the point. Some critical. Aziraphale insists on ‘sorting’ them, which seems pointless, but he wants – and maybe needs – to do it, so they do. And though their corporations don’t physically need to do anything of the kind, Crowley is fairly sure he heard Aziraphale being sick several times.

One of the papers, Aziraphale mutely holds out to Crowley. The date reads April 1793.

A strongly-worded letter, Crowley remembers.

And as he reads, he understands. Gabriel uses words the way a surgeon uses a scalpel. Disappointing. Wasteful. Indulgent. Questionable behaviour. Embarrassment. Ridiculous. Need to do better.

Crowley has never wanted to rip someone’s tongue out so much in his life.

He incinerates it with a snap of his fingers before Aziraphale can protest. “Up!” he orders, scrambling to his feet.

“Crowley–”

“Up!” Crowley insists, chivvying the angel to his feet. “Put on your best. We’re going for crepes.”

Aziraphale’s face breaks into a sunrise of a smile. “Oh!”

“Yeah.” Crowley snatches that damned beloved coat of his and holds it out for him, helping him into it. “Sod them. You can do what you like now. Free agent.” He smooths the coat on Aziraphale’s shoulders, feels the brief split-second of tension that evaporates at once. “Let’s be frivolous.”

“I _shouldn’t_.”

“Ah, ah!” Crowley wags a finger in his face. “That’s what they would say. What do _you_ want to do?”

Aziraphale chews his lip, eyes darting about, then clasps his hands together decisively. “I want crepes!” he declared. “And!” He snaps his fingers with a flourish, adding a perfectly folded pocket-square and – oh for Someone’s sake – a prominent green carnation in his lapel. He gives a happy little wiggle. “Oh, that feels… naughty.”

“Frivolous, even?” Crowley says, grinning at him.

“Oh, _everso_ ,” Aziraphale agrees, fingering the carnation. He gives out a shaky breath. “And when we come back, perhaps we should clear out the rubbish I don’t need anymore.”

So they do.

Full of crepes and wine and a rather fancy box of chocolates, they sit on stripy deckchairs – Aziraphale’s slightly giggly and tipsy choice – in the small courtyard behind the shop and burn every piece of constructive criticism that Gabriel has ever sent. Carefully, of course. The smell of burning paper still makes the flesh prickle on the back of Crowley’s neck. But Aziraphale needs this and he understands that too, so he sits and watches as Aziraphale feeds page after page into half an oil-drum.

And then – of course he does – he miracles a toasting fork for each of them and offers Crowley a marshmallow.

“Too frivolous?” he inquires, pinking, as Crowley stares at him in delight.

“Not even a little.”

Other documents and letters end the same way in the following weeks. Some, Aziraphale struggles with, some he hoards, some he…

Well, there are good days and bad.

Guilt is a big part of it.

He rants at himself, rails at the mistakes he made. What if they were right, he demands. What if he’s done everything wrong? What if, what if, what if…

Most of the time, he can talk himself out of it and he just needs Crowley there to be a sounding board, letting him throw the words, see what sticks and what makes sense. Most of them time, the guilt veers back to anger and disappointment and grief and sometimes, more.

There are tears. Not that he wants Crowley to see them, but there are.

The silent ones are the worst. Sometimes, Crowley wishes he could just shake him til his teeth rattle and scream that it’s all right to be upset, especially on the days when he finds the angel shrunken and smaller and folding inwards, eyes glassy and wet for all the worst reasons.

But he doesn’t. No screaming or shaking. He just…

He makes cocoa. Or tea. Or gets wine. Or brings little treats that’ll help. Little things to make it easier, day by day.

One day, the angel isn’t at the bookshop.

Crowley goes hunting and finds him not even three blocks away. Well… finds where he is. Can’t find him, on account of the fact his feet would sizzle if he tries to cross the threshold. Still, he’s in there and there’s only one entrance, so Crowley loiters by the gates and waits for him.

Tries not to listen to the insidious whispers that millennia in Hell have left behind. Tries not to imagine the worst that could happen.

Nearly jumps out his skin when the angel appears at his side and touches his shoulder.

“All right?” he demands, searching Aziraphale’s face, trying not to ask what he was doing in there, trying not to discover if he was considering – contemplating – wanting to go back to them.

“All right,” Aziraphale agrees. “I just… wanted to have a word with the Almighty. The… the human way.”

“Don’t you need a sheep for that?”

Aziraphale smiles and – to Crowley’s awe and relief – reaches out and takes his hand. “Not anymore, darling.” He folds their fingers together for the first time, squeezes, and his hand isn’t shaking like it did when Crowley took it. “I think I understand better now.”

“Yeah?”

The angel hesitates. “I’ll get there. I think.” And there, as always, the shape of his expression is the question he always fears to ask, the silent ‘can you?’ The unspoken ‘please?’

“You’re lucky I haven’t got anything better to do,” Crowley replies airily, as if it’s nothing. He lifts the angel’s hand, pushing the bounds of daring, and kisses it casually, with an exaggerated ‘mwah!’ to make it clear this isn’t a moment to be taken seriously. “So… what shall _we_ do now?”

Aziraphale brightens – and when he does, it’s like the sun coming out from behind a cloud – and he squeezes Crowley’s fingers. “We,” he says, somehow managing to linger on a two-letter, one syllable word as if it was a parfait, “should go dancing.”

“Ngh– psh– WOT?”

“Yes!” Aziraphale insists. “Dancing! I was rather good at it!”

“Since _when_?!”

Aziraphale wiggles, that sneaky little bastard smile on his face. “I wonder if there are any clubs like the Guinea boys these days.”

Crowley stares, mouth opening and shutting, and for the first time in a millennia or three, he’s speechless. “Guinea… angel, please tell me you weren’t– that you didn’t–”

And Aziraphale laughs like spring is in the air and his eyes dance. “Oh, not like _that_. For Heaven’s sake, Crowley!” He squeezes the demon’s hand again and blushes. “I’d only dance like that with you.”

And for the second time in as many minutes, Crowley forgets his words and this time, happily so.

“Fine,” he manages eventually. “Fine. Yeah. Dancing. Great. Let’s do that. You and me.”

As they meander – Christ all wobbly-legged, how the fuck are they meant to dance? – down the street, hand-in-hand, Aziraphale tugs his fingers gently. “Crowley, you do _know_ , don’t you?”

“Know what?”

Another of those fleeting side glances, the hopeful and fearful kind. “That I… that you…” He takes a shaky breath. “I _care_ a great deal about you.”

And Crowley smiles and lifts their tangled hands, kisses their interwoven fingers, and wobbles along beside him. “I know.”

And like a snake in the sun, he basks in the joy of an angel.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very personal story for many, many reasons.


End file.
